As is known, at present, the cells of a nonvolatile memory, in particular a flash memory, are programmed by biasing the gate terminal of the cell to be written (by means of a word line) to a first predetermined potential (for example, 8-9 V), the drain terminal to a second predetermined potential (for example, 5 V), and the source terminal to ground. Thus, by hot electron injection, electrons are trapped in the floating gate region of the cell, and therefore the threshold voltage of the cell is modified.